


we could steal time (just for one day)

by mjules



Category: The Perks of Being a Wallflower (2012)
Genre: Bisexuality, F/M, Figuring Things Out, M/M, Multi, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 21:35:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1098845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mjules/pseuds/mjules
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>we could be lovers (forever and ever)</p>
            </blockquote>





	we could steal time (just for one day)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nausicaa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nausicaa/gifts).



It didn't happen all at once. It seems like it just came out of the blue, but when I really look back at it, it took a long time. Do you know what I mean?

We wrote each other letters a lot while Patrick and Sam were away at college and I was still in high school, counting the days. And then I realized I was counting the days until summer break, not just because school would be out but because that was when they'd come back home. Usually one of them would come home first, before the other one. I almost liked that better than when they both came home at once, because when I saw them at the same time, I felt like I was too big for my skin, and it was a really strange feeling. It felt like I was  _too_ happy, and I didn't like thinking there was such a thing as too happy.

The first time Sam came home, I thought it was going to be weird after what happened before she left, but it wasn't. It was just the same as always, the three of us together in the old truck. But Patrick got home, we all went for a ride through the tunnel, and that wasn't the same at all. It was good, but I guess you can't recreate a perfect feeling. You can just have new ones, and remember the old ones. Patrick said that's called nostalgia, and he said old people get it when they listen to their music on the radio, and it makes them talk about how "back in my day, music meant something -- it had a beat, and you could sing to it, not like this newfangled stuff young people these days listen to." He imitated an old man's voice when he said it, and Sam laughed harder than I did, but I was smiling so much my face hurt.

That winter, Patrick got home for Christmas break before Sam did, and he took me out driving. He didn't take me to the places we used to go, and I thought maybe I was disappointed about that but I'm still not sure.

"I know we're not supposed to talk about it," he said, "and I won't bring it up again after this, but you scared me last spring. In the hospital."

"Because I was crazy?" Sometimes I really wished I could remember all of Patrick's visits to me. It meant a lot that he'd been there even when I was too out of it to know, but I felt like I was missing something because I only knew what other people told me about it.

Patrick was quiet for a minute, fingers tapping on the steering wheel, but he finally shook his head. "No. Not because you were crazy. Because I was afraid we were going to lose you."

I still think about that sometimes, how he said  _we_ were going to lose you, instead of  _I_ was going to lose you. I know that's something people say, to mean that you're important to a lot of people, but I think he didn't mean my family and the world. It wasn't a general "we." I think he meant him and Sam. When I look back at everything, that "we" is when I think it all started for real.

They got me a present for my seventeeth birthday, and signed it  _Love Sam and Patrick_. They  _also_ got me a present for Christmas and signed it,  _Love Santa's Elves (the hot one and the gay one) (oh wait those are both Patrick) (also the one who actually wrapped this, which is Sam)._ I sat and stared at the two boxes together for a long time without even trying to open them until Patrick finally reached for one and Sam slapped his hand and told him to let me open them in my own time.

I barely even remember what they got me (a book for my birthday, a sweater for Christmas), but I remember being stunned that they bothered to get me two presents. Stunned isn't quite the word I want, but I can't think of any words right now that mean what I need to say. Something like  _overwhelmed_ , but less dramatic.

On my eighteenth birthday, they asked me out to dinner. At the time I thought we were just going to hang out as friends, even though Sam told me to dress up and Patrick told me to make it  _special_. But they sat across from me in a diner booth and looked at each other, and Sam took one of my hands and said, "Charlie, we have something to tell you," and Patrick took the other one and said, "And something to ask you."

I guess I probably don't need to spell out for you what the two somethings were, and anyway, it feels weird to repeat it here. I can't write it down in a way that doesn't make it sound silly or cheap, when it was one of the most perfect and confusing moments in my life. But I said yes to the question ("Do you like us too?") ("Like  _that_ , he means, Charlie. You know.") and I may have blushed, and I forgot to eat most of my dinner because I was too busy listening to Patrick and Sam talking over each other, excited, like it was _their_ birthday instead.

They waited until we were in the truck--and they put me in the middle--to act on any of it. I guess it would have probably gotten us thrown out of the restaurant, even though all that happened was that they both kissed me, and when I started breathing too fast they both stopped and Sam stopped touching me and Patrick put his hand over mine and said my name in the quietest voice I've ever heard, like he was a little afraid, and I remembered when he said he was scared they would lose me.

"I'm all right," I told them. "I just... I've never been quite this happy before."

And Patrick smiled, and he kissed me again, slow and soft and sweet, and it was nothing like the other times we kissed when he was still in high school. This time I wanted him to, and I wanted to kiss him back -- and I did, and Sam laced her fingers through mine while it was happening, and I squeezed her hand and thought that nothing in my life had ever been quite this perfect before.

And Patrick was right that you can't repeat a moment's happiness, you can only find new moments with new ways of being happy, but for once I was ready to find all those new moments, even though I still spend a lot of time remembering the good ones we've already had. And when my countdown reached  _zero_ and I finally graduated high school, they were both there with my family, and I could hear them screaming my name over the whole crowd, and I loved them both so much I thought I would just burst.


End file.
